Cost? Benefits?

Most bags I have for sale are $6 each. Some may be more or less depending on weight in the bag or what it cost me to purchase the item to freeze dry.

Freeze dried food is more expensive than the non-freeze dried version. There are several reasons for that:

It can take up to 3 days to freeze dry some foods. That’s a lot of electricity used! About $4-$5 per batch (= 3 to 7 bags).
The cost of candy/fruit is going up, some more than others, so the price has to help cover those expenses. (Highly variable)
Unwrapping/peeling can sometimes take a significant amount of time and the price paid for products helps to pay for the work being done to prep the food. These are not mass produced with big machines. They are hand selected for quality and individually prepared. (All work done with no pay until the start up expenses are paid.)
Washing/soaking fruit– cleaning equals more prep time
Cutting to the right size to make the finished product bite sized and reduce machine time. Again, more work/time spent to make the best product.
Arranging the pieces on the trays takes time, but it has to be done so they don’t stick together and to minimize dry time.
Pre-freezing– food should be frozen before it goes in the machine. This can take 1-2 days time and more electricity to run the freezer.
Weighing– need a sensitive scale and the contents of each bag has to be weighed.
Packaging and labels are not free.
Event supplies– tables/covers, pop-up tent, shelving, signs/banner
There is time spent behind a table to sell the products directly to you. These aren’t mass produced items that sell themselves in a store. It has to be loaded up, driven to a good spot, set up on the sales table, and anything not sold gets transported back home. More time and work and gasoline expense.
And the biggest reason is the cost of the machine. Even the smallest machine is over $2,000 (The X-large is nearly $5000)! So that, along with prep equipment, packaging, scale, business fees, website fees, etc. needs to be paid off. That means selling about 500 bags before ANY profit is seen.

Benefits:

The most common reason people buy freeze dried treats is the TASTE! Freeze drying pulls out all the water/moisture from the food and makes the flavors really pop!
*It also makes it easy to transport and fun to eat.

You can do several things with freeze dried treats:

Eat them right out of the bag- yum!
Have freeze dried fruit available as a healthy, tasty snack option
Give as gifts
Pack them in your lunch (or your child’s lunch)
Crumble them and sprinkle over ice cream or yogurt
Crush them into a powder and add to water, icing, smoothies, baked goods, or other food to add a burst of flavor

I put the quality in every bag so you will see that the price of these treats is totally worth it!